


Here Comes the Flood

by XtinaJones91



Category: The Americans (TV 2013)
Genre: Angst, Depressing, Drama, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Spies & Secret Agents, This show can only end in suffering, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-02 20:21:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14552787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XtinaJones91/pseuds/XtinaJones91
Summary: Post 6x06/6x07 fic extending into vague predictions for the end of the series.Philip goes to Chicago. Things go as well as you'd expect.Now with an added Elizabeth-POV chapter.Title from the song of the same name by Tyler Owen.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here we are Americans fans. The end of the series approaches. This season has been so damn depressing I've been struggling to find inspiration to write anything. Then 6x05 and 6x06 happened.
> 
> I wasn't sure where to take this, and things get super depressing. Also I couldn't remember if Elizabeth's current partner in the field is someone she and Philip both worked with together in the past or not, and I also didn't care enough about her to look her up, so apologies to that character whom I left nameless.

When he hears her voice on the other end of the line he knows what he has to do. He’s going to go to Chicago, going to go to her, no matter what. It is not a decision he has to make, it is not a choice between her and not her, it just _is_.

It doesn’t matter that she won't ask him directly to come. She’s never been good at asking for help. And she won’t beg or plead either. But when she says she doesn’t know if she can save the client, he knows she’s not just referring to the agent they’re trying to save. He knows she thinks she might not make it too.

He’ll be damned if this is how it ends, how they say goodbye, hundreds of miles between them, only able to speak cryptically to one another over the phone. He never really pictured what the end would actually look like, but he always knew she would be at his side.

“I’m on my way,” he tells her.

He hopes it will be enough, hopes _he_ will be enough.

* * *

Chicago is gray and dreary, and yes, windy. He spends the majority of the day with his head down and his face shielded by a ball cap as he makes sure he’s clean. He switches his look a few times, shedding outer layers, swapping hats. Eventually he’s able to hide away long enough to add some facial hair to his disguise.

When he can waste no more time and feels he’s as clean as he’ll get, he takes the risk and arrives at the safehouse in the fading light before dusk.

It is not Elizabeth who greets him at the door, but another woman - her partner in this suicide mission he presumes. He doesn’t ask her name and she doesn’t give it. She tugs him quickly inside.

“Were you followed?” she asks, voice just above a whisper.

He shakes his head, cranes his neck to look down the hallway.

“She’s upstairs,” the woman says.

He nods and strides by her, not caring if she follows.

She doesn’t.

At the end of the hall on the second floor is a room with a light on and the door the slightest bit ajar. He approaches it cautiously, ball cap clutched tightly in his hands.

He raps his knuckles on the wood of the door, tapping out the still-familiar pattern of one of their old communication codes.

He hears the rustle of papers and then light, quick footsteps on the floor as he waits. The thin shaft of light widens as the door creaks open to reveal his wife.

Her hair is a shade of auburn he’s never seen on her before and her body thrums with nervous energy, her shoulder tight and her posture tense.

“I got here as soon as I could,” he says.

She takes his hands and pulls him toward her. Her arms take him in and wrap around him. He holds her tightly in response, relishes the feeling of her, warm and alive.

She buries her face in his neck and for a moment he feels her relax, can sense it as she allows herself a brief reprieve from the tension she constantly carries. Just as quickly as it happens, it ends.

She straightens and he steps back, lets her go. 

He nods in the direction of the bed where he sees maps and photos and diagrams laid out.

“Tell me the plan.”

* * *

They work late into the evening, moving to the kitchen downstairs so all three of them can go over and refine the plan together. The longer he’s there, the more the knot in his stomach tightens.

Even with him joining the operation, he still doesn’t like their odds. There are too many unknowns, too many things that could go wrong. But they have no choice, they have to go through with it. And soon.

It’s just after midnight when he manages to pry Elizabeth away from their work. The other woman had left them an hour ago, locking herself in her room on the first floor.

He flicks off the kitchen lights and follows Elizabeth upstairs. He pauses in the hall as she continues on, turns back from her bedroom to look at him when he halts.

He shrugs at one of the other empty rooms.

“I figured I’d just -”

“Philip.”

His eyes meet hers and she doesn’t have to say anything else.

He crosses the distance between them, barely registers the click of the door as it slips shut behind them.

* * *

First, they have sex. Hard, fast, desperate. They don’t speak, just act.

Then they make love. They are gentle with each other. They take their time. He whispers into her skin all the things he never said and should have told her, confessions, declarations, and apologies. In return, she gives herself to him fully, reveals her fears and shares her regrets.

Neither of them acknowledge what they both believe to be true - this will be the last time.

* * *

Less than twenty-four hours later he lies bleeding in an alley, thinking of her and the way she looked on the day he first met her. Her voice, frantic and strained drifts to him slowly, as does her face, older now, more lined. Still beautiful.

He wants to tell her that now, that in those first moments of their partnership he knew he could love her. But he also knew he’d have to fight to make her love him back. It was the one cause he was always willing to fight for, even when hope was lost.

But there’s no time for that now, no time at all. He knows he’s leaving her. But more importantly, she has to leave him.

“Go,” he croaks, hand clutching desperately at her jacket. “You have to go.”

In the background he hears sirens. Everything in his head is a think fog. He can’t tell how close they are or what direction they’re coming from.

Elizabeth shakes her head, refuses his command.

“I’m not...I won’t…”

He reaches for her face with his free hand, the one not clutching his side, slick with blood.

“Paige. Henry. You have to.”

She swallows.

He sees the conflict in her eyes, knows she feels this is an impossible choice.

Her eyes dart to the end of the alley. There’s a car waiting nearby somewhere. To take her away, take her to safety. He hopes. 

The sirens grow louder.

“Elizabeth,” he pleads. “Now.”

Her eyes fall back to hm, her face broken, her pain bared for him to see.

He is sure it is reflected back in his own face, his own heart.

She bends and kisses him then, first his lips, then his forehead. A delicate press, a promise she cannot keep.

“It was you,” she says, voice choked thick with more emotion than she can allow herself. “It’s always been you.”

He nods in understanding, squeezes her hand in his own one last time.

“For me, too.”

And then her hand is gone from his and she flees down the alley. He watches her go, fights against the pain as she grows smaller and further in his swimming vision.

He doesn’t know if she looks back because his eyes have slipped shut. He hopes she didn’t, hopes she didn’t waste an extra second she doesn’t have on him.

He lets the pain take him.

The sirens, blaring and insistent, fade from his consciousness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cris_8611 inspired me to write another part to this. It went in a really weird introspective direction, but I hope you still like it.
> 
> Regarding timeline...I kept Chapter 1 vague enough that I think this chapter can still flow well as if the events of 6x07 mostly happened the same way. Consider Chapter 1 my alternate version of 6x07.

After, everything is harder.

In the first few moments there is no time to think on it, to dwell. There is the fear and the adrenaline and the pure need to _survive_. Because if she doesn’t do that, then what was the point?

The Centre has a plan, and the Centre doesn’t have a plan. She barely makes it to Moscow in one piece. It’s a journey that exhausts her even further in ways she didn’t know were possible.

Paige gets out, but Henry doesn’t. The Centre didn’t have the time or the resources to spare to pull him from his school. Or so they tell her.

She knows - strongly suspects - that Stan got to him first, and she doesn’t know whether to be grateful or enraged.

So she has Paige, but she doesn’t have Henry, and isn’t that what she thought she wanted when they first made the deal? The reality is worse than anything she could have ever imagined.

The Soviet Union is crumbling, fracturing, and home is not the home she left all those years ago. Sure, there are some similarities, some familiar aspects she held onto in her memory, hazier as time passed. But like everything else, it leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.

Paige tries, makes an effort at first to blend in, make it her home, too. What else can she do? And if this isn’t quite what she was training for, she remains dedicated to a cause. What that is, Elizabeth doesn’t know. She doesn’t know herself what she’s working for now. But Paige needs something, so she chooses this.

In the beginning, Elizabeth chooses nothing, and for the first time in her life she is adrift. There is no mission to prepare for, no enemy to fight. Everything she knew is gone, gutted and bleeding out like the man she left behind in that alley.

She can’t bring herself to speak his name, let alone think it. Detachment is the only way she might ever overcome this. Extreme compartmentalization. She tries to do it, but she’s so damn tired.

It’s impossible not to think of him, no matter how hard she tries. How can she not when she’s left with his daughter, asking questions, seeking comfort, wanting to _remember_ , and the aching pull she feels for his son, a boy she will likely never see grow into the man she knows he’d be proud of.

The guilt and the regret consume her so deeply sometimes she can do nothing but lie in bed and stare at the cracked ceiling above her, think of all the things she could have - should have - done differently.

Sometimes she goes as far back to the day they met, wonders why her younger self didn’t push harder for a different partner, a replacement for the man she thought was too soft, too naive, too hopeful.

Maybe in the early years of their partnership, before the children, she could have done more to stop things before they went too far. She should have told him about Gregory then, given him a reason to divorce her. They could have continued working together, just not as a married couple.

Once Paige and Henry came into their lives, there were no longer any opportunities. Those years were busy, full of the business, their children, the work. They had a routine and things were fine enough. She knew she was lucky. Not every partner was as understanding, patient, and calm as hers.

Then there was Timoshev. If she had agreed to take the deal, betray her country and go over to the Americans, where would they all be now? Would they be happy? Would they still be together? She doesn’t know.

Timoshev was the beginning of a downward spiral, one that began slowly and picked up speed and intensity as they were pulled into its vortex.

The warning signs were there for her to read for so long, but she didn’t know how to act, couldn’t take the steps he so desperately needed her to. He needed to get out, but even when he finally did, it wasn’t enough.

Because she was still in, and now Paige was too, and he was tied to both of them, neither of them willing to sever the line.

He was trapped, stuck half in two lives he didn’t really want. And the reason was her.

She let herself be blind to it until Chicago. Until he held that axe in his hands and was once again forced to do the work he hated most. And why? Because of her.

She is the maker of her own suffering, the creator of her harsh new reality, the destroyer of her family.

He never asked for much, and in the end she couldn’t give him what he truly wanted - a peaceful life with her and their children. A normal life.

But if it wasn’t for the life they both chose as foolish teens so long ago, they never would have had each other for the time that they did. She may not believe in fate or destiny, but she knows this to be true.

There are no other universes in which they find each other, live different lives as different people, happy and carefree. There was the life they had and nothing else.

She tries to remind herself of this in the darker moments, the ones where she can’t see past the despair his permanent absence has wrought upon her. As strong as she is, there are things that do manage to break her. The loss of him is one.

As easy as it would be to fill her hours with grief, she cannot, must not.

When she feels herself start to drown, she shifts her focus to Paige, to helping her daughter find a place in this land that is both home and not. And she fights to get her son back, though part of her fears he will not want that, will not want her.

But his father would want them all together, a family in whatever form they can manage.

And so she has her cause, her new war to fight.

This time, she will not lose.

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't hurt me. We all know they ain't getting a happy ending.


End file.
